


in perpetuum

by perennials



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: F/F, Future Fic, Kinda, chilllllll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 23:39:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15762099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: Up until this point, Yachi has never been in love.





	in perpetuum

It starts out as an innocent crush on a senior. Have you seen the third year with the ash gray eyes and the mole on the left side of her face; she’s the manager of the boys’ volleyball club, she’s a literal goddess. Have you seen Shimizu Kiyoko.

 

Up until this point, Yachi has not. Yachi has not seen anything at all, still too young to know what it means to want to fold yourself into someone else’s arms like a paper crane. Up until this point, Yachi has never been in love.

 

Then Yachi sees Shimizu Kiyoko, goddess of the boys’ volleyball club, and her fifteen year old heart falls right through the floor.

 

It never quite comes back up again, by which she means, with flustered eyes and frantic hands, that she never does anything about all these quiet revelations. After all, Yachi is fifteen and has not seen anything at all, and Shimizu is not. Shimizu has pretty hair and pretty eyes and the kind of careless, lemonade-sweet confidence that shows itself in the way her words carry across the wide, open spaces of classrooms. Shimizu looks like a dream. Shimizu is eighteen, which means horizon-heavy things like college applications and farewell parties and profound conversations on sidewalks stained pink with sunset. All these things Yachi still knows nothing about.

 

So she holds her silence for a year, and holds onto that paper crane for another five. She grows up, as they all must eventually. She grows into herself.

 

So Yachi forgets, if only momentarily, about her fifteen year old love, shaped like the wings of a little black crow.

  
  


//

  
  


Years later, they meet again at the intersection of some nameless, soundless street in Tokyo. It is Monday, the sun creeping back into the solace of night. Shimizu is ballad-blue, wearing a tailored blazer and black pumps and these dangly earrings that make her look like a supermodel. Carved out of the dullish cityscape like a figure on the sidewalk of some minimalist painting, destined for the great big walls of an art museum.

 

But above all, Shimizu is here. Yachi recognizes her immediately, like how you never quite forget the taste of your favorite packet apple juice as a child. Yachi falters from the other side of the street.

 

It has been a while. In that treacherous pocket of time, Yachi has learned to stop wanting and  _ wanting to be like  _ at the same time. It took her a while— several failed relationships, several burned bridges, too many nights spent at the bar with Hinata yelling old pop songs into her ear and Yamaguchi rubbing circles into her back while Tsukishima tried not to look worried and gently failed. It took her a while.

 

Throughout it all, if there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, it is this: ash-gray eyes, a goddess-like glow, the way Yachi can’t tear her gaze away.

 

The green man blinks back on. Reluctantly, all the cars take a brief hiatus from being loud and dangerous. Yachi remember to breathe.

 

Yachi remembers to breathe, because she is not fifteen and foolishly young anymore, and then she crosses the street to where Shimizu is still standing. She says  _ hi Shimizu-senpai, I haven’t seen you in a while _ and her voice doesn’t stutter like it would have in the past, and she doesn’t scramble to put her hands somewhere so they’ll stop flailing awkwardly at her sides. She says  _ hi,  _ and means  _ I think I’m still in love with you. _

 

And Shimizu doesn’t look shocked or appalled or horrified, because nothing is ever quite as bad as Yachi’s diligently overactive imagination posits it to be. Shimizu doesn’t— Shimizu doesn’t walk off, or bat away the hands that Yachi has sifted very gently over her own.

 

Instead, she meets Yachi’s gaze, hesitantly, hopefully. Still quiet like fire, the way she was all those years ago in the school gymnasium, watching blown-glass boys break themselves over and over so their bones would heal stronger. Still brilliant.

 

_ Hi,  _ Shimizu says back, and smiles, and Yachi’s timeless, ageless heart falls right through the floor of this nameless Tokyo street, stained pink with sunset.

 

It falls right through.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> hit me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nikiforcvs)
> 
> more things i wrote for twitter prompts. i have this other big ass krtsk dimension travel thing, which i think is pretty cool, but i'm like this close to the conclusion and i'm getting intimidated by my own chapter draft so uh haha brb  
> anyway hope this was cool. hope ur cool
> 
> have a good one


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